Solid-state light sources such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are an attractive alternative to incandescent light bulbs in illumination devices due to their higher efficiency, smaller form factor, longer lifetime, and enhanced mechanical robustness. LEDs may be grouped in clusters or arrays to provide a desired light output characteristics corresponding to design requirements and/or application specifications.
However, lighting devices featuring arrays of interconnected LEDs may suffer from issues that plague all interconnected networks of devices—when a single device fails, the failure may degrade the performance of other devices, or even shut one or more (or even all) of them off entirely. One or more LEDs may fail during manufacture or operation due to a fault in, e.g., the LED itself fails, or a failure may occur in one or more of the conductive traces supplying power to the LED, in the substrate to which the LED is attached, or in an electrical or mechanical connection between the LED contacts and the traces. Such faults may result in an intermittent connection or an open or short circuit. In some cases, the failure of even a single LED may be unacceptable from a visual appearance and/or performance perspective, such as degradation in the illumination intensity, efficiency and/or uniformity.
Accordingly, there is a need for structures, systems and procedures enabling inexpensive and efficient repair methods for array-based illumination systems.